Murder was their only motive

Murder was their only motive

Wednesday 26 September 2001 11.31 EDT
First published on Wednesday 26 September 2001 11.31 EDT

Perhaps, like me, you have been receiving various communications about the true meaning and motive for the immolation of the World Trade Centre. Or perhaps you have been reading the odd speech, or even Guardian letter, interpreting the wishes of the hijackers and the deep grievances that underlay their actions. I have a standard practice that I follow with such messages or such analyses. "Dear Sir or Madam," I reply. "You claim to have information about what was already in the minds of the death squads on the morning of September 11 2001. May I express the hope that, before communicating this valuable intelligence to me, you conveyed it to the proper authorities. Indeed, may I have your assurance that you have already done so? If, on reflection, you now decide that you did not have any advance intelligence of these actions, would you very much mind keeping your idiotic opinions to yourself." Try it. It works every time, by letter or in conversation.

This of, course, does not free one from the task of interpreting such actions for oneself. The death squads commandeered four planes, which were full of fuel but not quite full of passengers. They could well have assumed that the aircraft would have been fully booked. They knew that the optimum population of the WTC on a working day was 50,000 civilians. They were limited only by the takeoff time appointed by air traffic control, and could well have anticipated a delay of, say, half an hour. Furthermore, they were not to know that the curtain walls of the twin structures would hold for long enough to allow an implosion, or internal collapse. They could have at least hoped for the structures to measure their lengths (they each stood a quarter of a mile high) across downtown Manhattan in the morning rush hour. The maximum harvest of random yet intended dead could have been perhaps 100,000 people: a Dresden for the Taliban. I repeat, those who want to be ventriloquist's dummies for such a "hidden agenda" are being far too modest. They owe us a much more complete and convincing explanation than they have so far produced.

Ask me, and I'd say that the "motive" for such an action was to kill as many innocent people as seemed feasible, while spending some quality time in the company of the other innocent people who were being kidnapped for the purpose of murder. Press me further, and I'd say that the political or theological agenda was the vindication of a primeval fundamentalism. (Ask me for my evidence, and I would point out that perhaps 700 Muslims were burned alive in New York on September 11 last. My comrades at the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee tell me that New York's Yemeni community alone is mourning 200 missing.) Since the death squads had some knowledge of the area, and of American society, they can hardly have imagined that they were hitting only unbelievers. But the believers were the wrong kind of Muslim, or were otherwise expendable. That, by the way, is what fundamentalism means.

Don't forget Kissinger

The date - September 11 - was already a significant one in my calendar. It was on that day in 1973 that the elected government of Chile was overthrown. The images of the aerial bombardment of Santiago and the blitzing of Salvador Allende's residence have never left me. Nor yet the images of the football sta dium into which Chilean and other civilians were herded for torture and murder. I haven't yet heard anyone insult our comrades by saying that Chilean democrats took out their righteous rage about this by committing mass murder in Manhattan, but these days one has to be ready for infinite stupidity. The only comparable act of state-sanctioned terrorism that ever did occur on American soil was, however, committed by Chileans. It's just that they worked for General Pinochet, and exploded a car bomb in rush-hour traffic in Washington DC in September 1975, murdering the famous dissident Orlando Letelier and his American companion. Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries.

Anyway, that murder in 1975 was the twin of a murder in 1970, that followed Henry Kissinger's order for the removal of General Rene Schneider, another Chilean democrat who, as head of the armed forces, had been opposed to the mounting of a coup. Amid the ghastliness of two weeks ago, a suit was filed in a federal court in Washington DC on the afternoon of September 10. It is brought by the family of General Schneider and is a suit for wrongful death against Kissinger. I make this point to show that the discourse of "law and order" has not completely replaced, and must not be allowed to replace, the discourse of human rights and international law. Kissinger used diplomatic bags to smuggle lethal weapons past the customs of a democracy; he is potentially outside the law as much as any terrorist. Those who care about such things should be offering to help the Schneider family rather than acting as second-hand volunteer interpreters for Osama bin Laden or (the last brave cause of Pinter and Pilger) that renowned Muslim-baiter Slobodan Milosevic.

Why can't Rushdie fly?

Every liberal twit talks about the danger of "over-reaction" to the Taliban, when the actual danger is, and has for some time been, one of under-reaction. There's also non-reaction, or non-sequitur reaction. The Federal Aviation Authority, which has been wrongly reported as having forbidden Salman Rushdie to fly to or from the United States, has been even more pseudo-vigilant than that. It has, for now, asked American domestic airlines not to take him as a passenger. This capitulation actually occurred one week before the WTC atrocity, in the name of the enhanced security measures that now apply to everybody. But it hasn't been rescinded now that these measures supposedly do apply. Most European airlines have been flying Rushdie to and fro for years, and the Iranians (who rightly resent the filthy persecution of the Shia Muslims in Afghanistan) are for the moment our allies against Islamist fascism. So let's see if I have this right: an author with a long record of opposing violence and fundamentalism is denied the right to travel freely, while two men who were on international "watch lists" were able to buy tickets in their own names. Feel safer now? Get ready for more such stupidity: the brave American civilians who fought off the hijackers over Pennsylvania would now not be allowed the in-flight cutlery or the cellphones that permitted them to mount a desperate resistance and to inform their families and friends that they weren't going gentle. Had it been otherwise, I would be looking out at a gutted Capitol or charred White House, and reading Pinter or Pilger on how my neighbourhood had been asking for it.

Lines on Lord Archer

The American pacifist and anti-militarist tradition hasn't always been so morally dull, and one of its great poets was Edna St Vincent Millay, of whom a fine new biography has just been published. Robert Conquest, master of the limerick and the double entendre, told me, however, to look up the opening lines of one of her sonnets in The Harp Weaver. It reads:

"Lord Archer, Death, Whom Sent You In Your Stead?

What Faltering Prentice Fumbled At Your Bow?"

This cheeringly unites the unwise Saggitarian metaphor with the new thirst for decent prison literature. One must at all costs have entertainment at a time like this.